Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Bystander Effect Of The Modern Age: Cries For Help Falling Into Social Media Abyss
The Washington Post: When A Cry For Help Rings Out On Facebook, Who Answers — And How?
If the Internet is a public forum, then social media is the megaphone installed at the center of it. Certainly it attracts oversharers, the ones who hash out breakups in Facebook statuses and live-tweet their days in embarrassing detail. We lurk in the cyber shadows and tsk and snicker — this is modern voyeurism at its most entertaining. But then there are people like my acquaintance who seem to be in a different, more dangerous kind of distress that seems private but is broadcast, intentionally or not, to a wide network of onlookers. It looks suspiciously like mental illness. (Tepper Paley, 7/25)
The Washington Post: A Family Tree Entwined By Cancer
“My paternal grandfather had breast cancer.” That always makes whoever is charting my medical history look up. “He had a radical mastectomy in the 1970s. And his sister had it, too — she died young. And one of his nieces. And his daughter — my aunt.” At age 37, I have just been diagnosed with breast cancer, and the genetic counselor is furiously sketching out my family tree on a sheet of paper. There are squares and circles, the cancer victims marked with X’s. Lots of X’s. (Riggs, 7/25)
